Las Vegas has been "engaged in a high-stakes restaurant arms race since it welcomed Spago 20 years ago," the New York Times wrote last year of the area's eateries that brought in $8 billion in 2011. Amid all the Godzilla -sized mojitos and celebrity-chef-driven menus on the Strip, healthy fare usually isn't at the top of the list. So I was surpised to find a Healthy Eating mobile app from (drum roll) MGM Resorts International . Of course, "healthy" is a subjective term (more on that later)

A nutrition advocacy group joined with scientists and health agencies Wednesday to ask the federal government to decide just how much sugar is “safe” in sodas, raising the bar in its crusade to curb the “dangerously high” amounts Americans consume. Drinks are the single largest source of added sugar in the diet, and the request to the FDA is one way to fight back against the “ubiquitous marketing and heavy consumption” of sugar-sweetened beverages, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Jacobson, said at a news conference in Washington.

Chain restaurants have been nudged and cajoled for years to ditch mammoth portion sizes and high-calorie choices. But perhaps the best motivation to lower-calorie, more healthful menu items is here: profit. A report released Thursday calls lower-calorie menu choices “just good business.” “We found that those restaurant chains that were growing their lower-calorie items, they demonstrated business advantages,” Hank Cardello, lead author of the report from the think tank Hudson Institute, said Thursday at a news conference to discuss the report.

Jose Landaverde was inspired to cook by memories of making pupusas with his late father, who was killed in El Salvador. Jorge Perez's interest in food was cultivated by his grandfather, a caterer who introduced him to exotic spices on a trip to Thailand. And Lucile Flores was practically raised in kitchens, especially at the Jack in the Box restaurant where both of her parents work. Drawn to food by powerful family ties, the Los Angeles Unified student chefs took their culinary interest a grand step further Thursday as they vied to win the local round of a national high school healthful cooking competition.

IHOP has a Country Fried Steak & Eggs combo menu item with 3,720 milligrams of sodium. Johnny Rockets' Bacon Cheddar Double burger has 50 grams of saturated fat. The Bistro Shrimp Pasta from the Cheesecake Factory has 3,120 calories. Each one is likely lip-smackingly delicious. But they're also far over the doctor-recommended limits of 2,000 calories, 20 grams of saturated fat and 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day. This week, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, is calling out such intense meals - and the chains that produce them - as promoters of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

The nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest announced the "winners" of its Xtreme Eating Awards, handed to restaurant-chain dishes with off-the-chart calories and saturated fat. Some are obvious awardees, such as a milkshake that actually contains a slice of apple pie. But pasta with shrimp, arugula, tomatoes and mushrooms? How bad could that be? Pretty bad, it turns out. Following are some of the dishes that topped this year's list of awardees, and the amount of calories and saturated fat that put them there.

Let's be real here. Anyone who orders a meal with three pieces of breaded chicken, a buttery sauce, and mashed potatoes can't be much surprised that it's high in calories. Or that a piece of cake that weighs close to a pound might, as they say, be applied “directly to the hips.” So why would the Center for Science in the Public Interest - advocacy group or nutrition nag, depending on your perspective - give a dubious shout-out to those restaurant choices and several others on Wednesday by handing out “Xtreme Eating Awards”?

A perennial target for critics of sugary drinks, Coca-Cola Co. took to prime-time TV broadcasts to acknowledge its role in the fattening of Americans - and to defend itself. In a two-minute advertisement that was to debut Monday night on cable news channels, the world's top beverage company addressed what it called the "complex challenge of obesity. " In a spot it called "Coming Together" - a similar phrase Starbucks Corp. used in the fall to try to get fiscal cliff negotiations moving - Coca-Cola showcased its efforts to be transparent about the nutritional content of its products and to expand its line of drinks with low or no calories.

TV dinners got a relative thumbs up in a medical journal - when compared with recipes offered by TV chefs. Surprised? Turns out that the British TV dinners, called “ready meals” there - had fewer calories and less fat and fiber than the chefs' recipes. None of the dishes complied with the World Health Organization recommendations, however, the study in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal said. The researchers compared 100 main-course recipes from five bestselling cookbooks with 100 “ready meals” main courses from three leading British supermarkets.

December 11, 2012 | By Melissa Healy, This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

For those of you struggling with your weight, here's a future transplant list you will want to be on: Receive some brown fat from a lean, healthy donor, have it injected in or around your belly fat, and quickly see your metabolic function improve, your white-fat deposits make way for lean muscle and your scale show a downward trend. That tantalizing prospect for fighting fat took a small step closer to reality Monday with the publication of a study that found that, in chubby mice, at least, such as procedure worked.